A place to discuss the characteristics of the cars in Formula One, both current as well as historical. Laptimes, driver worshipping and team chatter do not belong here.
Not very accurate that one, I found ... I don't think the floor "fences" are what he actually mentions in the video.
Willem Toet has specifically called out tv commentators and motoring press about their theories on “using air to seal the floor” and said “that’s absolutely not what we do”.
The strakes, and have been point out many times are vortex generators for the under floor, and have been around for nearly 30 years in their current iteration in other series.
The floors also “ingest” further back, air from the edges to feed the powerful vortices as they travel most of the car’s length.
The sealed floors worked under the premonition that flow is laminar. It isn’t anywhere on an open wheel cad and it’s why they have the drag eq. of a large pickup truck (and why they need so much power to reach trap speeds cars 35 years ago were hitting, granted that drag is a byproduct of a lot more downforce now).
I think they mostly just try to avoid dirty air being injected into any of the underfloor flow structures. Which I guess is what they are really referring to when they say "sealing the floor". It's more, using outwash to protect the floor from unwanted ingress that may break down carefully curated flows under the car.
Is it known exactly what upgrades Mercedes will bring to the Monaco race?
They'll just modify the edges of the max downforce barn door rear wing and call it the day, big upgrade targeting the canadian GP
If I remember correctly James Allison or Toto Wolf said they cannot afford or prioritize outlier circuits like Monaco and Monza and not aiming to develop parts for those circuits.
Allison confirming Merc have upgrades in Monaco, "aero and others", bringing upgrades in Canada and again in the races to follow. Seems in line with what ted said James told him in imola of incremental upgrades and then a big one before summer break
“You measure what you measure on your car, but ultimately the truly telling thing about whether your stuff worked is did you move forwards? Because that is the purpose of upgrades, is it propelling you up the grid in any meaningful way?
“And I would say based on the race pace that we saw in Imola that we took a gentle step forward. We are several tenths of a second now nearer the front than we were at the start of the year and in Imola itself, we moved a tenth or two nearer to the front.
Do we think there was a genuine improvement relative to Red Bull with the most recent update? I can't see it in my own notes (which are pretty mediocre, admittedly).
Allison confirming Merc have upgrades in Monaco, "aero and others", bringing upgrades in Canada and again in the races to follow. Seems in line with what ted said James told him in imola of incremental upgrades and then a big one before summer break
Increment updates have always left me curious, because aerodynamics don’t occur in isolation. You change one part and you effect everything downstream of it.
Incremental updates more read to me like fixing things more so that an “upgrade”.
Allison confirming Merc have upgrades in Monaco, "aero and others", bringing upgrades in Canada and again in the races to follow. Seems in line with what ted said James told him in imola of incremental upgrades and then a big one before summer break
Increment updates have always left me curious, because aerodynamics don’t occur in isolation. You change one part and you effect everything downstream of it.
Incremental updates more read to me like fixing things more so that an “upgrade”.
Apparently its the same thing they're doing that they did with Imola and Miami, where an upgrade package that was all meant for one race is being split up into two instead of waiting for everything to be ready, in this case, Canada, and Ted also said he spoke to James during fp2 in imola and theres also a big upgrade coming before summer break (i'm assuming silverstone)
Allison confirming Merc have upgrades in Monaco, "aero and others", bringing upgrades in Canada and again in the races to follow. Seems in line with what ted said James told him in imola of incremental upgrades and then a big one before summer break
Increment updates have always left me curious, because aerodynamics don’t occur in isolation. You change one part and you effect everything downstream of it.
Incremental updates more read to me like fixing things more so that an “upgrade”.
Apparently its the same thing they're doing that they did with Imola and Miami, where an upgrade package that was all meant for one race is being split up into two, in this case, Canada, and Ted also said he spoke to James during fp2 in imola and theres also a big upgrade coming before summer break (i'm assuming silverstone)
I understand that, but with aero, everything upstream effects everything downstream. So if you change, for example, the front wing, the entire flow field over and under the car changes, and to make that front wing actually work, you have to change multiple things downstream.
So in my mind, for it to actually work in increments, it’s not changing that much and likely more correcting the flow field to how they originally wanted it.
Increment updates have always left me curious, because aerodynamics don’t occur in isolation. You change one part and you effect everything downstream of it.
Incremental updates more read to me like fixing things more so that an “upgrade”.
Apparently its the same thing they're doing that they did with Imola and Miami, where an upgrade package that was all meant for one race is being split up into two, in this case, Canada, and Ted also said he spoke to James during fp2 in imola and theres also a big upgrade coming before summer break (i'm assuming silverstone)
I understand that, but with aero, everything upstream effects everything downstream. So if you change, for example, the front wing, the entire flow field over and under the car changes, and to make that front wing actually work, you have to change multiple things downstream.
So in my mind, for it to actually work in increments, it’s not changing that much and likely more correcting the flow field to how they originally wanted it.
Apparently its the same thing they're doing that they did with Imola and Miami, where an upgrade package that was all meant for one race is being split up into two, in this case, Canada, and Ted also said he spoke to James during fp2 in imola and theres also a big upgrade coming before summer break (i'm assuming silverstone)
I understand that, but with aero, everything upstream effects everything downstream. So if you change, for example, the front wing, the entire flow field over and under the car changes, and to make that front wing actually work, you have to change multiple things downstream.
So in my mind, for it to actually work in increments, it’s not changing that much and likely more correcting the flow field to how they originally wanted it.
ah, i see what youre getting at
It’s semantics, because fixing something is an upgrade, but it’s probably better to think of these as more of “correction” updates.
Increment updates have always left me curious, because aerodynamics don’t occur in isolation. You change one part and you effect everything downstream of it.
Incremental updates more read to me like fixing things more so that an “upgrade”.
Three things:
- every change affects both upstream and downstream flow
- not a single change is simulated in isolation of what will be brought, so there is understanding (to the best of team's available knowledge) of how the pieces that won't change will be affected
- unless every piece of bodywork is replaced and a new chassis introduced, every update/upgrade is essentially incremental, only the size of the increment varies
I don't think it is a good idea to pigeon hold Merc to any particular philosophy or perspective.
They did say the base of the car is good and that the priority is to pile on the downforce. You can change the geometry down stream, confirm that this works and, if the front wing is a suspect, you can now make that sensitive change, and deploy a better front wing that further enhances the performance of the parts downstream.
Not sure if this is allowed in the chat but, I think the next change we will see is to the overall sidepod geometry. Specifically the inlet and most likely a more aggressive upper sidepod slope to the diffuser.
The reason I think this is because (to me) the inlet seems to suggest that they have the right idea as RB, Ferrari and Alpine but they probably did not have the budget to develop it further, they didn't have the ability to understand it enough with their sim, or that it was simply their aerodynamasis inability to understand it. I think it's the later.
I do think they have an issue with the front wing but not in the usual sense. I think Ola Jegede designed a damn good front wing but Gioacchino Vino couldn't produce a comparable aero package. I hope Ola gets promoted to take his place.
“You measure what you measure on your car, but ultimately the truly telling thing about whether your stuff worked is did you move forwards? Because that is the purpose of upgrades, is it propelling you up the grid in any meaningful way?
“And I would say based on the race pace that we saw in Imola that we took a gentle step forward. We are several tenths of a second now nearer the front than we were at the start of the year and in Imola itself, we moved a tenth or two nearer to the front.
Do we think there was a genuine improvement relative to Red Bull with the most recent update? I can't see it in my own notes (which are pretty mediocre, admittedly).
In Imola:
Lewis was +35s behind Ver, he made a mistake that cost him 5s, so it should be around 30s. Per lap difference 0.476.
In China George was +38s behind Ver, Per lap difference 0.679
Imola Pole/China Pole = 0.796
So normalized difference: 0.796 * 0.679 = 0.540
0.540 - 0.476 = 0.06, so congrats Merc for gaining half a tenth
“You measure what you measure on your car, but ultimately the truly telling thing about whether your stuff worked is did you move forwards? Because that is the purpose of upgrades, is it propelling you up the grid in any meaningful way?
“And I would say based on the race pace that we saw in Imola that we took a gentle step forward. We are several tenths of a second now nearer the front than we were at the start of the year and in Imola itself, we moved a tenth or two nearer to the front.
Do we think there was a genuine improvement relative to Red Bull with the most recent update? I can't see it in my own notes (which are pretty mediocre, admittedly).
In Imola:
Lewis was +35s behind Ver, he made a mistake that cost him 5s, so it should be around 30s. Per lap difference 0.476.
In China George was +38s behind Ver, Per lap difference 0.679
Imola Pole/China Pole = 0.796
So normalized difference: 0.796 * 0.679 = 0.540
0.540 - 0.476 = 0.06, so congrats Merc for gaining half a tenth
I'll just assume you're making a simplistic comparison for fun rather than any serious discussion.
Allison confirming Merc have upgrades in Monaco, "aero and others", bringing upgrades in Canada and again in the races to follow. Seems in line with what ted said James told him in imola of incremental upgrades and then a big one before summer break
Increment updates have always left me curious, because aerodynamics don’t occur in isolation. You change one part and you effect everything downstream of it.
Incremental updates more read to me like fixing things more so that an “upgrade”.
One could argue that the wind tunnel is an approximation of the full sized car, and in the wind tunnel they do test parts one by one at times, so it follows that brining incremental upgrades to the track is a more thorough way of testing a carefully selected group of parts as part of a big package, and feeding back data to the wind tunnel, so they can tune the whole package, and their tunnel in the most accurate way.
They parts they select first to bring to track might be the more "tweakable" parts or the ones that have easier adjustment in the tunnel, or the ones that have a stronger effect on downstream flow... Is what I'm gonna guess.
It's exaclty in-line with the "incremental" philosophy that they have commited to now.
